Kickstarter Has Raised One Billion Dollars and Games Have Helped the Most

The world of funding and invention has really changed since the creation of Kickstarter. As of today, Kickstarter has recorded its one billionth dollar pledges. That’s one billion dollars that independent developers would have never gotten if consumers did not band together over the internet to say “yes, we want this product no matter what publishers say.

Granted, games aren’t the only thing that is funded via Kickstarter. Heck, Kickstarter has funded things like city pools, theater pieces, and even individual trips around the world. But gamers have been the greatest contributing source of Kickstarter money. 215.75 million dollars of the one billion dollar milestone came from the gaming world.

That being said, not all of this money is successful. In fact, Kickstarter has only logged 859 million dollars in successful donations. So that whole billion hasn’t actually managed to go to inventors and content creators. However, this statistic holds quite a great deal of hope. Simple math says that 85.9 percent of that money was successful, and that’s a HUGE amount of money and a HUGE success rate for independent developers. Examining games alone, 189.84 million dollars went to successful projects. That’s 87.9 percent of all gaming donations going to successful projects!

Of course, gaming isn’t some sort of golden Kickstarter messiah. It’s actually the fourth worst category overall. In fact, even though a majority of Kickstarter’s money has gone to gaming, and a majority of that money went to successful projects, there are actually fewer successful gaming projects on Kickstarter than there are unsuccessful. Gaming projects have a success rate of 35.15 percent, well less than half. It’s the fourth worst category overall, behind Technology at 34.79 percent, Publishing at 32.29 percent, and Fashion at 29.3 percent, because no one wants to wear a dress made of aluminum cans.

Then again, gaming is still inexorably tied to Kickstarter’s success. For example, the day that Kickstarter received the most donations was March 13th, 2013, where over $4,029,585.45 was donated to 1,985 projects. Note, that this is the exact same day that Double Fine’s Broken Age project, one of the most successful gaming Kickstarter projects of all time, was funded.

So where will Kickstarter go in the future? What new games will Kickstarter enable? More importantly, what Kickstarter projects are you looking forward to? Perhaps you have donated to the Torment: Tides of Numenara Kickstarter for some oldschool dark RPG action? Or maybe you just want to get your Megaman back on with Mighty No. 9? Whatever your tastes, Kickstarter can only operate because of fans like you, donating hard earned dollars to developers that need it. This success isn’t just Kickstarter’s, it’s yours!